What are interrupts?, Operating System

Assignment Help:

What are interrupts?

Interrupts are in some ways the mainly "famous" system resources, ever since almost everyone who's used a computer has heard of them even if they don't know what they are. An interrupt is essentially what it sounds like a message from one part of the computer to another (normally to the system processor) that tells it that it needs to stop what it is doing and perform something else instead. An IRQ is an interrupt request as well as is the name for the actual signal that is used when peripheral requests can interrupt of the processor.

Interrupts play a major role in how the processor performs input/output processing and interfaces with every peripheral in the computer from the mouse and keyboard to the hard disk and modem

The processor is a highly-tuned mechanism that is designed to (basically) do one thing at a time. Though we use our computers in a way that requires the processor to at least appear to do many things at once, if you have ever used a multitasking operating system like Windows 95, you've completed this; you may possibly have been editing a document while downloading information on your modem and listening to a CD simultaneously. The processor is capable to do this by sharing its time among the various programs it is running and the different devices that need its attention. It merely appears that the processor is doing many things at once because of the blindingly high speed that it is able to switch between tasks.

 


Related Discussions:- What are interrupts?

Define deadlock, Define deadlock. A process requests resources; if the ...

Define deadlock. A process requests resources; if the resources are not available at that time, the process enters a wait state. Waiting processes might be never again change s

Benefits of dynamic linkage of libraries, Q. What are three benefits of dyn...

Q. What are three benefits of dynamic (shared) linkage of libraries compared to static linkage? What are two situations where static linkage is preferable? Answer: The

Explain about disk scheduling with neat diagram, Explain about disk schedul...

Explain about disk scheduling with neat diagram? FCFS Scheduling SCAN scheduling C-SCAN scheduling SSTF scheduling LOOK Scheduling

Explain virtual file systems, Virtual file systems The file-system exec...

Virtual file systems The file-system execution having of three major layers. The first layer is the file-system interface, based on the open, read, write and close calls and fi

Write a short note about context switch, Write a short note about context s...

Write a short note about context switch. Switching the CPU to another process needs saving the state of the old process and loading the saved state for the new process. This ta

Interval between time of submission and completion of job, Interval among t...

Interval among the time of submission and completion of the job is known as                    Interval among the time of submission and completion of the job is known as Turn

Explain acyclic graph directories and its implementation, Acyclic Graph Dir...

Acyclic Graph Directories In this kind of directory structure the shared directories or files can exist in the file system in two or more places at once. A tree structure excl

What are the various page replacement algorithms, What are the various page...

What are the various page replacement algorithms used for page replacement? FIFO page replacement Optimal page replacement LRU page replacement LRU approximat

Computer organisation, basic advantage of using interrupt initiated data tr...

basic advantage of using interrupt initiated data transfer over transfer under program control without an interrupt

Define input - output operations, Q. Define Input - Output operations? ...

Q. Define Input - Output operations? Serial lines, Disks, tapes and other devices should be communicated with at a very low level. The user require only specify the device and

Write Your Message!

Captcha
Free Assignment Quote

Assured A++ Grade

Get guaranteed satisfaction & time on delivery in every assignment order you paid with us! We ensure premium quality solution document along with free turntin report!

All rights reserved! Copyrights ©2019-2020 ExpertsMind IT Educational Pvt Ltd